Drug delivery is a serious issue for certain molecular entities and for certain delivery sites. For example, delivery of large molecules, such as an antisense or RNAi molecules, is difficult as such compounds are generally not able to penetrate cell membranes. Moreover, molecular entities that are highly negatively charged and hydrophilic can have restricted diffusion across cell membranes. Furthermore, selective drug delivery to targeted delivery sites is often a challenge because molecules which are cell permeable are often not selective. One solution to cell diffusion and targeted delivery is drug conjugation to targeting agents.
Targeting agents often enhance pharmaceutical attributes including pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. Targeting agents allow the drug payload attached to the targeting agent to be efficiently distributed to and uptaken by specific cells. Certain sugars, such as galactose, N-acetyl galactosamine, and other galactose derivatives including those described by M. G. Finn and V. Mascitti et al. in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, 134, 1978 (2012) have been used as targeting agents for hepatocytes due to the binding to asialoglycoprotein receptors (ASGPR) that are present on the surface of hepatocytes. However, such targeting agents sometimes present some pharmacokinetics problems or may present suboptimal pharmacokinetics profiles.
Intravenous/per oral (IV/PO) pharmacokinetics (PK) studies are done in animal models (generally rats, mice, dogs or non-human primates) or in humans during clinical trials to obtain information on how a drug is absorbed, distributed, metabolized and eliminated in the body. Generally, the drug is formulated with methylcellulose or polyethylene glycol (PEG), sugar and water before administration. Blood samples are taken at different time points for up to 24 hours, usually via the saphenous vein. The blood samples from the dosing arm are pooled, centrifuged and plasma collected. The plasma is diluted so that the concentrations are within the dynamic range of the standard curve (1-5000 ng/mL). The plasma samples are then analyzed for the analyte of interest.
Consequently, there still exists a need for drug delivery agents conducive to improved pharmacokinetics profiles.